This post was published long before the Mists of Pandara Expansion.
The tips and techniques explained here may be outdated.

Addon: ButtonTimers

A while back I switched from DotTimers to ButtonTimers. I think it was when 3.0 launched. Initially I had a lot of problems getting DotTimers setup and I decided that although DotTimer’s ability to track dots on multiple targets and pair that up by raid symbol was nice.. I wasn’t really using it so I went looking for other solutions.

ButtonTimers is a happy marriage between a clickable button bar and a set of timers. You configure up to 4 different bars to show on your screen. These are parts of the default bars which you configure. Onto this bar you drag spells and then configure what the timer is supposed to show. Also note the little white mark on the timer bar. That’s when a tick occurs.

Click the ButtonBar image to see the full screenshot. (Note: the image to left is actually showing about 3 different addons in addition to ButtonTimers***)

For example, I only use Bar 1. I can’t imagine why I’d need more than one bar.. but up to 4 are available. Anyway. I enabled Bar 1 and disabled Bars 2, 3, 4. I’ve configured BT to show 6 total buttons. These buttons are -actually- located on the default button bar #7. That default bar happens to be mostly unused in my UI so it was nice discrete place to tuck away these buttons. After I setup how many and where in the default bar they were I dragged spells from my spellbook onto the bar. The addon doesn’t seem to play nice with macros so just drag these from you spellbook.

By default the timer for the button will track the DoT on my target. For most of these, that was enough (Corruption, Haunt, and Unstable Affliction). I didn’t have to do any additional configuration for those.. For a few I had to do a bit more to get the display I wanted.

For the Life Tap, I want the timer bar to show for the time left of the Life Tap buff (from the Life Tap Glyph) which is on -me-(note that the “target” drop down is changed to “Player”). Check the screenshot to see how I set that up.

For Shadow Bolt I wanted to track the duration left of Shadow’s Embrace on my target. Check the screenshot to see how I set that up.

For Curse of Agony I wanted the timer to also track the duration if I have Curse of Doom on my target or Curse of the Elements (this is so that if I’ve switched curses I don’t want to see an empty timer above CoA because this will cause me to re-cast it and recasting would overwrite CoD or CotE). See Screenshot.

During combat I spend most of my time with my eyes glued to this button bar. I recast Haunt as soon as it’s off cooldown but before the bar actually drops. I start casting UA ~1.5 seconds before the timer bar drops. I recast CoA right after the timer is gone and the outline disappears from the button bar. I try to Life Tap enough to keep myself in mana and to keep the Life Tap buff up, but too much otherwise Life Tap cuts into my DPS.

I have configured this same type of setup (with different spells) for my Druid. I’m sure it’s useful for other classes but I don’t have a lot of experience with them.

*** Three other addons shown in addition to button timers: Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text (the numbers with spell icon splattered all over the left of the picture telling me how much the spells are ticking/hitting for), Inline Auras (the colored outline around a button that tells me that this DoT is on my target or on me), OmniCC (The cooldown numbers shown ON the button bars). Additionally, if you click through to the full size screen shot, the parenthisis around my toon showning my health/mana is MetaHud (just figured I’d put it here and head of the questions beforehand). Expect a full review of the UI within the next week or so.

hi folks
im loving button timers its awesome for my afflic specc
but im having trouble setting it up for demo specc…i cant get it to show Molten Core and Decimation cd’s
is this because i havnt got a icon to drag onto the the bar for MC and Dec procc’s

i dunno what to do. i can put my COE on the bar, but, it wont let me add nuther (EX: life tap). Also, i cant even see bar #1. So, i activated bar 2 and disabled #1/3/4. But, if i do this, it de-activates bar 2. What am i doing wrong?